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Monday, November 24, 2008

Here's my middle girl. Everyone loves her, but she's not often the one to grab the headlines. She likes to do a good job but is comfortable in a background role most of the time.

Someday, like her older siblings before her, her attention-seeking performer's persona will probably arrive on the scene. In the meantime, while she quite enjoys performing, she has to consciously put on that attention-seeking persona as a costume. It's a cloak she doesn't feel quite natural in yet and it tends to slip off her shoulders if she's not keeping an eye on it.

But this La Folia is a big step in the right direction. She kept that costume on most of the time and wore it proudly. It is not an easy piece to play, either from a technical standpoint or in the sense of putting it musically and rhythmically together with the piano. It's like 13 separate little pieces, each with it's own ensemble and technique challenges -- and it's long! When she sat after performing she looked very pleased, but said "wow, that seemed to go on forever!"

4 comments:

There are so many good things about this performance that it seems silly to single any out, but I'm going try anyway. I loved the "presentation" and focus and attention to detail, and the emerging "mature" tone quality, the flexibility of the left hand and quick adjustments to double stop intonation. And the rhythmic integrity...very interesting to see how she established this at section "boundaries". Nice!